There is a large demographic of Christians who believe this. Out of their need for answers, they have made God the author of suffering. But suffering is not from God; it contradicts the very heart and nature of God. That is bad theology. And bad theology does not just give you wrong answers. Bad theology gives you the wrong God. And you cannot love, trust, or draw near to a God you secretly believe is hurting you.
The assumption that God is somehow responsible for suffering comes from the belief that, since God did not intervene at the fall, He must have allowed it, or worse, willed it. But if that is the case, we have silently redefined the will of God to include everything He did not visibly prevent. We have made Him responsible for every earthquake, every cancer diagnosis, every act of violence; simply because He did not reach down and stop it. We have made Him the employer of the devil.
To author something and to allow it are two entirely different things. A father gives his son the car keys for the weekend, and the boy drives into a ditch. No one walks to that father’s door and says, “You put him in that ditch.” Everyone understands, the father gave an opportunity and the boy made a choice.
Two thousand years ago, God gave humanity something far greater than car keys. He gave us freedom – free choice. We took it and we drove into the ditch. The choice Adam made was his to make. God did not author it. He did not influence Adam, nor did He twist his arm. God is not the cause of human suffering. He was not the one who drove into the ditch.
Suffering began with a bad choice; the decision to eat a forbidden fruit. In that act of rebellion, satan seized the opportunity to unleash chaos on the earth. God made a world without sickness, without death, without sorrow. That world was invaded. Its system was usurped. Adam and Eve were given the extraordinary gift of genuine moral freedom, but they chose to hand the dominion of this world over to another master. And that master; whom Jesus calls a thief, a liar, and a murderer, has been exacting his toll ever since.
In John 10:10, Jesus, as the living will of God on the earth, draws the clearest possible line of demarcation: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” He listed two masters, with two agendas and two completely different intentions toward you.The Father sent the Son to demonstrate that He is not the cause of suffering and chaos. He sent Him to bring restoration and healing from the crash.
The cross is not God watching from a safe distance while humanity suffers. The cross is God, in Christ, taking the full weight of a broken world into His own body. “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows… He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4–5).
And oh! Do not forget the resurrection. The worst thing suffering can produce is death — but Jesus walked out of that tomb to declare that we do not have to remain at the mercy of what the devil has done. Every broken thing can be restored. Every stolen thing can be recovered. Every destroyed thing can live again.
That does not sound like a God who lets bad things happen to good people. That sounds like a God who stepped into the worst of it — so you would not have to face it alone.